Studies On Tiger Populations
His longest single project is the monitoring of the health of forests and biodiversity in the Nagarahole Wildlife Sanctuary and National Park in Karnataka. Some results arising out of the study, on the status of tigers and their prey in particular, have been published in several scientific papers and books.
Dr. Karanth is the pioneer in the scientific application of camera trapping techniques of capture-recapture sampling as the foundation of scientific estimation of tiger population densities in forests. By applying a robust statistical model to camera trapping sampling data, a close estimate of tiger population in a given area can be determined. This is distinctly different from the pugmark method previously used by the Indian Ministry of Environment and Forests, Project Tiger five-year tiger census. It is also different in its approach in that it does not claim to produce an absolute count of tigers in a given area but is more indicative of population levels.
This approach to tiger conservation relies on conservation of forests from both a prey and predator perspective. Dr.Karanth suggests that with such approaches, it is possible to preserve tigers in India and elsewhere.
Read more about this topic: K. Ullas Karanth
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